Alice and Kitty

On June 15, The Oxford Children’s Literature and Youth Culture Colloquium will present a talk on Disney’s Alice, Hello Kitty’s Alice, and Carroll’s Alice: An Aspect of Children’s Cultures in the US, UK, and Japan by Yasuko Natsume of Tsuda College, Tokyo.This talk examines American and Japanese animated film adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a means of accessing children’s cultures in the U.S., U.K., and Japan. Natsume’s paper focuses on Disney’s self-supporting, independent Alice (who stands in contrast to the majority of early Disney princesses) and Sanrio’s 1993 Hello Kitty™ version, in which Kitty, a Japanese symbol of cuteness, plays the part of Alice.